AR Technology Company Attracts Big Investment

Augmented-Reality Technology Company Attracting Big Investment

Technology & e-commerce company Alibaba is digging deeper into the automobile industry after launching its first car last year. The company announced the Chinese Internet and e-commerce beast is the lead investor in smart car tech developer WayRay’s $18 million Series B round. Founded in 2012, WayRay makes holographic navigation systems. According to its funding announcement, WayRay has already spent $10 million of its own cash, as well as previous venture funding, on the technology that underpins Navion, an augmented-reality dashboard that overlays directions and other information onto a driver’s view of the road. WayRay plans to unveil a consumer version of Navion in 2017.

Alibaba Group’s senior investment director, Ethan Xie stated, “We believe there is huge potential in the development of leading-edge technology like augmented reality and its application to various industries, like WayRay’s AR navigation system in the auto sector. The potential of augmented reality makes it an exciting and promising area.” Alibaba made its first appearance in the car industry last summer, when the RX5, a smart car it designed with SAIC (one of China’s “big four” state-owned auto manufacturers) opened for pre-orders. The RX5 uses Alibaba’s Yun operating system and the company anticipates to make the vehicle part of an Internet-of-Things ecosystem that will include its other smart hardware and Internet services like Alipay.

But Alibaba’s smart cars are already up against challengers from other big Chinese tech companies like LeEco, which bills its electric car LeSee as “the first mobility ecosystem on wheels,” and Baidu, which is developing smart car technology and autonomous vehicles with BAIC, another of China’s big four state-owned automakers. WayRay also said that it will partner with Banma Technologies (a joint venture between Alibaba Group and SAIC) to create an augmented-reality navigation and entertainment system for a car that will be launched by Banma in 2018. WayRay claims that this is “the world’s first vehicle in-production with a holographic AR head-up display.”